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WASHINGTON (AP) — In the latest action to undo Biden-era regulations on climate change, the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday proposed repealing a rule that requires some public companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions and the risks they face from global warming.

The climate-disclosure rule has been on hold since last year, after the Republican-led commission said it was pausing its legal defense after legal challenges by business groups and Republican state attorneys general.

The SEC said in a statement that it is now moving to rescind the disclosure rules “in their entirety because they exceed the scope of the agency’s statutory authority.” The rules, finalized in 2024, “impose substantial costs on public companies and their shareholders that are not justified by the informational benefits they may provide to some investors,” the commission said.

Eliminating the rule will “avoid the practical effect of dictating corporate behavior” and ensure that agency rules will “be imposed only when the expected benefits justify the likely costs and burdens,” SEC Chairman Paul Atkins said in a statement.

Environmental groups said the action would leave investors without data they need to accurately assess financial risks and other hazards related to climate change.

“The SEC’s mission is to protect investors and the public by ensuring they have access to material information,” said Kathy Fallon, director of land systems at the nonprofit Clean Air Task Force. “While imperfect, the rule was an important step toward giving investors consistent information about financially material climate risks, including the use of carbon offsets.”

She urged the commission to retain the rule and enforce disclosure requirements “that give both investors and the public the transparency they need.”

Repeal of the climate-disclosure rule is among dozens of environmental rollbacks imposed in President Donald Trump’s second term. The Environmental Protection Agency has eliminated major climate change programs, promoted deregulatory efforts that Trump calls the largest such move in American history and canceled billions of dollars in Biden-era environmental justice grants.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has focused on weakening or eliminating regulations perceived as climate-friendly, including revoking a scientific finding that has long been the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.

Zeldin has said his actions will put a “dagger through the heart of climate change religion.”

The SEC, an independent agency whose members are appointed by the president, approved the climate rule in March 2024 on a party-line vote. Three Democratic commissioners supported it and two Republicans opposed.

The commission currently has three Republican members, including Atkins, and no Democrats.

The 2024 rule was one of the most anticipated in recent years from the nation’s top financial regulator, drawing more than 24,000 comments from companies, auditors, legislators and trade groups over two years. The vote brought the U.S. closer to the European Union and states like California, which have imposed similar corporate disclosure rules.

Sen. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who long pushed for the disclosure rule, said the SEC announcement “is the result of years of work by corporate polluters to delay, defang and decimate rules meant to protect people’s investments from risky and reckless business models.”

Americans’ retirement security, union pensions and savings should be protected by the SEC, “not put in harm’s way by companies that are exposed to climate risks or that depend on an unfettered ability to pollute in order to make money,” Markey said in an email to The Associated Press.

Tom Zimpleman, an attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the SEC is shirking its responsibility to protect investors. “Climate risk is financial risk,” he said.

A public comment period will remain open for 60 days following publication of the proposal in the Federal Register, expected in the next few days.

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By Abigail Summerville

May 29 (Reuters) – Yum Brands is in exclusive talks to sell its Pizza Hut chain to LongRange Capital, a source familiar with the matter said on Friday.

The two parties are advancing in discussions about a potential deal that could come together in several weeks, the source said, adding that there is no guarantee a deal will be reached.

Yum Brands and LongRange did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

Shares of Yum Brands, which also owns KFC, were up about 4% in extended trading following the news. Bloomberg News first reported the development earlier in the day.

This comes at a time when the fast-food industry is grappling with persistent demand weakness, as increasing use of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs prompts consumers to opt for healthier foods.

Rising inflation and a plunge in consumer sentiment to a record low in May have compounded the strain, making diners think twice before eating out. U.S. pizza giants are also struggling with stiff competition and rising commodity costs.

(Reporting by Anuja Bharat Mistry in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar)

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is assessing damage to its launch pad after a rocket exploded during a test firing, creating a giant orange fireball seen and felt for miles around.

The company fueled the hulking New Glenn rocket Thursday night, hoping to briefly ignite the engines ahead of a satellite launch next week. But the 321-foot (98-meter), rocket blew up, taking part of the pad with it.

Aerial views on Friday revealed heaps of crumpled structures on the ground, with just one tower and the water tank still standing. Emergency officials warned the public to avoid any wreckage that might wash ashore and to instead call 911. There were no reported deaths or injuries.

It’s a major setback for Blue Origin, coming just one month after the entire New Glenn fleet was grounded because of an upper-stage engine issue that dumped a satellite in the wrong orbit.

Named after John Glenn, the first American in orbit, New Glenn is the rocket that Blue Origin plans to use to launch landers to the moon under NASA’s Artemis program that aims to build a sprawling base near the moon’s south pole. The goal is to land the first Artemis moonwalkers as early as 2028. Earlier this week, the space agency awarded a new contract to Blue Origin worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

One of the biggest rockets to reach orbit, New Glenn has seven first-stage engines fueled by liquid oxygen and liquefied natural gas, which is essentially methane. It has flown three times.

None of the assigned 48 Amazon Leo satellites were on board the newest rocket when the blast occurred. Another batch of Amazon Leo satellites — competing with SpaceX’s Starlinks to provide internet service to remote locales — awaited liftoff several miles away at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, courtesy of United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket.

Within 12 hours of the explosion, SpaceX launched more Starlinks to orbit Friday morning. CEO Elon Musk has two Florida pads in action, one on the Space Force side where the latest Falcon 9 lifted off and the other at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

Blue Origin has just one Florida pad: Launch Complex 36 dating back to the early 1960s. NASA’s Mariner and Pioneer interplanetary probes rocketed away from there, as well as the moon-bound Rangers and Surveyors. The Washington state-based Blue Origin spent more than $1 billion rebuilding the launch complex — taking it from double pads to a single — after leasing it from the Air Force in 2015.

The company’s smaller New Shepard rockets soar from Texas, skimming space for a few minutes with tourists and science experiments. Those suborbital hops were paused in January so the company could focus on New Glenn and upcoming moonshots. All that is now on hold, pending the investigation into the explosion.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said late Thursday that the space agency will evaluate near-term impacts to the Artemis program, which saw four astronauts fly around the moon in April. That Artemis II mission was hoisted by NASA’s Space Launch System rocket.

Before the explosion, Blue Origin was on track to launch a prototype lunar lander to the moon on a New Glenn this fall, with another lander due to rocket into orbit around Earth in 2027 for docking practice by the soon-to-be-announced Artemis III crew.

A touchdown by two astronauts on Artemis IV — using a Blue Moon lander or SpaceX’s Starship, whichever is ready first — was targeted as early as 2028.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has revoked the visa of a Chinese national working for the state news agency Xinhua in the United States, in an apparent reciprocal act to Beijing’s decision to expel a New York Times reporter.

A person familiar with the matter confirmed the visa had been revoked. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter involves visa privacy. A State Department official confirmed there was a plan to revoke the visa.

The tit-for-tat move by the Trump administration has followed the expulsion by Beijing of Vivian Wang, a China correspondent for The New York Times, apparently over the appearance of the Taiwanese leader in a DealBook event in which Wang had no role. It was a rare occasion of the U.S. government directly retaliating against Beijing’s expulsion of American journalists.

The Times, which first reported the reciprocal move by the Trump administration, said the newspaper does not ask governments to revoke media credentials or otherwise interfere with the work of any journalist. On Friday, the paper issued a statement calling for Wang to be reinstated as a credentialed journalist in China and urging both governments to “reverse this deterioration in journalist access.”

“The Chinese government’s decision to expel Vivian Wang is wrong,” Joseph Kahn, the paper’s executive editor, said in a statement published on the Times’ corporate website. “Her expulsion will make it even harder for our global audience to get accurate, independent and in-depth reporting about the world’s second largest economy at a critical time.”

The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Wang is leaving China when the presence of U.S. media is already thin after previous rounds of disputes over journalistic credentials, leaving several U.S. news organizations with skeleton staffing in their China bureaus.

“The number of correspondents from American media outlets allowed to work in China has now fallen to an alarmingly low level, at a time when the need for people everywhere to understand China is greater than ever,” Kahn wrote.

Beijing moved to expel Wang, a China correspondent for the newspaper since 2020, after the media group’s DealBook Summit 2025 featured Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te in a recorded interview with host Andrew Ross Sorkin. Sorkin called Taiwan a country, and Lai warned of Beijing’s aggressive behavior in the Taiwan Strait and vowed that “Taiwan will do everything necessary to protect itself.”

The Chinese government claims sovereignty over Taiwan, which split from the mainland in 1949 after Mao Zedong’s communists won a civil war. In the latest summit with President Donald Trump in Beijing, in mid-May, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned that China and the U.S. could “collide or even clash” over Taiwan if the issue is not handled properly.

The decision against The New York Times also has created unease among other Western media that might interview Lai, giving the self-governed island a voice, at the risk of losing their abilities to report within China.

All foreign journalists must be accredited by China’s foreign ministry to report in China, and Beijing has used the accreditation and visa policy to expel or keep out foreign journalists whose work has upset the Chinese leadership or to show displeasure with what Beijing views as unfavorable or malicious coverage of China.

In 2020, for example, the Chinese government expelled three Wall Street Journal correspondents after the financial newspaper ran an opinion piece titled “China is the Real Sick Man of Asia” following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As U.S.-China relations soured, the U.S. State Department in 2020 designated some major Chinese news groups as “foreign missions”. Xinhua, for example, is tasked by the ruling Chinese Communist Party to serve as the mouthpiece of the party and the government, which includes distributing their official news.

Beijing in turn drastically limited visas for journalists working for U.S. media.

In total, at least 18 foreign journalists working for The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal were expelled in the first half of 2020, according to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China. Many others were given short visas ranging from one month to three months, according to the group’s annual survey.

The two governments later reached a one-time agreement that allowed U.S. media to send in a small number of correspondents to mainland China. Wang was one of them.

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MEXICO CITY, May 29 (Reuters) – The U.S. and Mexico trade negotiators on Friday concluded their first bilateral negotiating round to revise the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade, discussing automotive rules of origin, steel and aluminum trade and economic security, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office said.

“The United States concluded discussions with the goals of reducing the trade deficit with Mexico and strengthening American supply chains,” USTR said in a statement.

The trade agency said that the two sides will continue to advance their discussions on June 16-17 in Washington, D.C., in talks covering agriculture and “a level playing field.” A third round is scheduled for the week of July 20 in Mexico City, but so far the talks exclude USMCA partner Canada.

(Reporting by David Lawder, Editing by Franklin Paul)

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HONG KONG (AP) — A prominent Hong Kong journalist began serving a five-day prison sentence Friday after losing an appeal against his conviction for obstructing a police officer in a case that sparked concerns about the city’s declining press freedom.

Hong Kong was once a bastion of media freedom in Asia, but news outlets have been forced to close, several journalists have been arrested and those still working are operating in a narrower space since authorities began cracking down on activist voices following the mass pro-democracy protests in 2019.

Ronson Chan, a former chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, was arrested in September 2022 on his way to a reporting assignment. He was accused of refusing to show the plainclothes officer his identity card upon request.

A lower court sentenced Chan to five days in prison in 2023, ruling that he had failed to take out his identity card in a timely manner and kept asking the officer questions “recklessly.” He appealed the decision and was granted bail.

Deputy High Court Judge Lily Wong upheld Chan’s conviction and sentence Friday and ordered him to be sent to prison.

Ahead of the hearing, Chan, who wore a black T-shirt printed with the words “Free Press,” told reporters that he felt uneasy and complex. He said he stayed in Hong Kong to continue to pursue his journalism career because press freedom was promised by the city’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law.

“If I end up losing today, I feel it would be quite a big irony for me personally,” he said.

In the crackdown following the 2019 protests, two vocal Hong Kong media outlets — Apple Daily and Stand News — were forced to shut down in 2021.

Two former top editors at Stand News were convicted of conspiracy to publish and reproduce seditious publications in 2024. One of them was sentenced to 21 months in prison.

In February, Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai was sentenced to 20 years in prison after being found guilty of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and conspiring with others to publish seditious articles. Six other newspaper staffers, who were also convicted under a national security law like Lai, received jail terms ranging from six years and nine months, to 10 years.

In other newsrooms, journalists are facing more red lines and increasing self-censorship. The erosion of press freedom parallels a broader curtailment of Western-style civil liberties in the former British colony, which returned to China’s rule in 1997.

The Hong Kong government insists the security law is necessary for the city’s stability.

The city ranked 140th out of 180 countries and territories in Reporters Without Borders’ latest World Press Freedom Index.

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By Noriyuki Hirata

TOKYO, May 29 (Reuters) – As Japan’s yen drifts back to levels that prompted official intervention a month ago, markets are sizing up Tokyo’s remaining financial firepower and political will to defend its ailing currency.

Japan spent about $63 billion in what were suspected to be multiple bouts of yen-buying intervention at the end of April and early May, a small fraction of its $1 trillion war chest. But traders think that spending all of that, or even much of it, is unrealistic. And as speculative bets against the yen creep up again, authorities will be looking to keep markets on edge.

“The more foreign reserves shrink, the more vulnerable Japan looks to speculators,” said Daisaku Ueno, chief foreign exchange strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities. With yen-selling pressure showing no sign of easing, “the war of nerves between the authorities and the market looks set to continue.”

Yen-buying intervention requires selling foreign assets, of which Japan held about $1 trillion at the end of April. After subtracting the roughly 10 trillion yen ($62.78 billion) deployed in the April and May actions, based on calculations of Bank of Japan money market data, that leaves about 150 trillion yen, or enough for “around 30 rounds” of intervention, according to Goldman Sachs economist Yuriko Tanaka.

‘CRUCIAL’ UNDERSTANDING

But exhausting all of Japan’s foreign assets wouldn’t be feasible, particularly as it would negatively impact the value of U.S. Treasuries at a time when cooperation from the United States is critical. The U.S. Treasury conducted so-called “rate checks” that helped nudge the dollar-yen rate down in January.

“U.S. understanding is crucial” to sustaining the impact of any intervention, said Takeshi Ueno, a senior economist at NLI Research Institute. If Washington were to push back on such activity, it “could invite speculative yen selling.”

FREE-FLOAT RULES

Another potential check on intervention is an International Monetary Fund standard whereby a country that steps into markets too often can risk losing its “free-floating” exchange rate status. But chief currency diplomat Atsushi Mimura has said the IMF rules served as no constraint on how many times the government can intervene.

“The thinking is that curbing excessive volatility takes priority,” said Akira Moroga, the chief market strategist at Aozora Bank. Even if Japan were to lose its free-floating currency classification, “I don’t think they care at all,” he added.

The yen slid to 159.65 on Thursday, the weakest since April 30 when Japan is suspected to have made its first intervention in almost two years. The Ministry of Finance is scheduled to announce at 1000 GMT on Friday the total amount spent on foreign exchange intervention since April 28.

Japanese Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama on Friday again declined to comment on whether her agency had intervened, repeating that officials were ready to take “decisive action.”

CAUTIOUS BOJ

The yen has been battered by the three-month-long Middle East crisis, with soaring energy prices delivering a terms of trade shock to Japan, which imports almost all its oil. That exacerbated an already weakening trend amid the BOJ’s cautious approach to raising interest rates and expectations of expanded fiscal stimulus under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.

Whereas previous Japanese administrations have focused on the speed of change in deciding whether to intervene, the current government appears more centred on defending the 160 per dollar line. Rather than fearing intervention, some market participants are now positioning for it.

A dealer at a domestic bank said buy orders for dollars are clustering in the 155-157 yen per dollar zone, reflecting real dollar demand among importers as well as speculative positions. On the top side, market expectation is that the next intervention will come before the 162 level.

“The government will want to defend that level at all costs,” said a dealer at a domestic bank.

($1 = 159.2800 yen)

(Reporting by Noriyuki Hirata and Kevin Buckland, writing by Rocky Swift; Editing by Sam Holmes)

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BEIJING, May 29 (Reuters) – China’s factory activity likely remained flat in May after expanding for two months, indicating that weak domestic demand and cost pressures stemming from the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran may have begun to weigh on the manufacturing sector.

The official manufacturing purchasing managers’ ‌index (PMI) is expected to drop to 50 from 50.3 in April, hitting the threshold separating growth from contraction, according to the median forecast of a Reuters poll of 14 economists.

Results of the PMI survey, set to be released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Sunday, will shed some light on the impact of another month of logistics disruptions and price shocks on China’s manufacturers, as the Middle East conflict dragged on and the Strait of Hormuz oil supply chokepoint remained largely closed.

Economic indicators released earlier this month painted a mixed picture of the Chinese economy in April, with goods exports surging while growth in retail sales and industrial production sagged. Producer prices soared, raising input costs, yet profits of industrial firms recorded their fastest growth since November 2023.

On one hand, persistently weak domestic demand and industrial overcapacity expose the economy to external risks like energy price volatility and trade partners’ protectionist measures. On the other hand, a global artificial intelligence boom has fuelled demand for China-made electronics, underpinning expansion in advanced manufacturing sectors and sustaining the momentum in exports.

Although U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing in May yielded no major breakthroughs, Beijing and Washington did agree, following the summit, to seek reciprocal tariff cuts on $30 billion or more worth of goods. Beijing’s Commerce Ministry also said it hoped the U.S. would “honour its commitment” to ensure that tariff levels on Chinese goods will not exceed the level set under a trade truce reached last year.

So far, resilient goods exports and China’s energy reserves have cushioned the economy from the effects of the war and reduced the urgency for major stimulus measures, especially after policymakers set a softer growth target for the year.

But if cost pressures keep mounting, policymakers will need to further boost domestic demand, stabilise the job market and support the struggling real estate market to shield the economy from external uncertainties.

(Reporting by Yukun Zhang and Ryan Woo; Polling by Pulkit Khanna and Susobhan Sarkar in Bengaluru and Jing Wang in Shanghai; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus)

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May 29 (Reuters) – Chrysler-parent Stellantis is recalling 419,035 vehicles in the U.S. as a software error could delay the side air bags from deploying during a crash, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on Friday.

This would leave the vehicles non-compliant with U.S. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, NHTSA added.

The recall affects models including the 2022-2026 Jeep Grand Cherokee and the 2023-2025 Jeep Grand Cherokee L, the auto regulator said.

Dealers will update the occupant restraint controller module software free of charge, NHTSA said.

(Reporting by Disha Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Ronojoy Mazumdar and Rashmi Aich)

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BANGKOK (AP) — Rescuers working at a flooded cave in Laos said Friday that they were trying to drain water out to help extricate five villagers who have been trapped for more than a week.

An overnight rainstorm has complicated their efforts, they said. Meanwhile, searching continues for two more people who still haven’t been located. The villagers had reportedly entered the cave to look for valuable minerals.

Rescue experts from Laos and neighboring Thailand have been working together for the past week, making their way through twisting, narrow passages with jagged walls and flooded sections of the cave located in a rugged area in the central province of Xaisomboun, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) north of the capital, Vientiane.

Those helping out included several divers who took part in the complicated 2018 rescue in northern Thailand of 12 schoolboys and their soccer coach who were trapped for more than two weeks in a cave.

The Lao organization Rescue Volunteer for People says that another diver from Malaysia is assisting in the operation. Kengkaj Bongkawong, head of Thai rescue group Metta Tham Rescue Kalasin, said that divers from Indonesia, Japan and France were also on their way.

The discovery on Wednesday of five trapped villagers triggered celebrations among the rescue teams. They said the search for the other missing two will continue.

A video filmed by Thai cave diver Norrased Palasing showed the emotional moment he and Finnish diving instructor Miiko Paasi emerged from the water and discovered the trapped men. In the footage, the men are wearing headlamps and sitting on a rock surrounded by floodwater.

The five men were identified by their first names as Khamla, Mued, Ee, Ing, and Laen, according to the Lao rescue group. They were reportedly in good health but exhausted from dehydration and lack of food. Divers have since delivered soft food and water to them.

The men could be heard wailing as they saw their rescuers, and Norrased inquired about their health and conditions.

Along with introducing themselves on camera, they delivered messages to their families telling them not to worry.

“Don’t worry mom, dad. I’m still strong, I’m still healthy. Tomorrow I will be home. I love you mom and dad,” said the man, who introduced himself as Mued.

Lao officials say the villagers normally forage in the mountainous, heavily wooded surroundings for a living.

The villagers had been reported to have entered the cave to look for gold deposits. Bounphong Khammanyvong, a local official in Longcheng, the district where the cave is located, said that they had noticed rocks or sand with unusual colors in the cave, so they entered it in the hope of digging them out to see if they were valuable.

Bounphong, in an interview on Thursday with local media outlet Xaisomboun Province Television, said the villagers were trapped when heavy rain caused flooding that blocked them from leaving. An eighth person who managed to escape alerted the authorities.

He said that the group went in on May 20, contradicting rescuers who put the date at May 19.

Rescue Volunteer for People posted on its Facebook page that Friday’s operation plan included pumping water out of the cave in an attempt to get the five villagers out later in the day, but that heavy early morning rain had complicated their efforts.

“The front of the cave is in a low-lying area. When it rains, all water will flow down to this area and into the cave,” Bounphong said in his interview.

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